Washing process for textile materials



Patented Sept. 27,

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE} I wasmndggiii lsg goa 'mxma Q 7 v Ehrhart Franz, Leipzig, Germany No Drawing.

Application December 12, 1933,

fgglzal No. 702,031. In Germany December-'13,

1 Claim.

This invention relates to a washing process for iawlsemimanufactured and finished textile maeri s. The process according to the invention is suited particularly for cleaning very dirty textiles, containing pitch, tar, oil, wax, resins or color. As the process does not injure thematerials, it can be applied alsofor cleaning sensitive animal and vegetable textiles including silk, hair and wool.

10 Since wool,is particularly sensitive, the removal 0f pitch and suint offered the greatest diificulties hitherto to the known cleaning methods. The pitch referred to involves the colors used for marking animals to prevent the theft thereof and comprising, as a rule, linseed oil, pitch, resins, asphalt; etc., usuallymixed with pigments. Most marking colors contain red lead or colored earths. The suint, on the other hand, is a secretion of abnormally functioning sebaceous glands and in most cases due to improper treatment of the animals, though it may also indicate degeneration. With respect .to their-chemical and physical be havior, the most essential constituents of suint are waxes. Both impurities are not removed by normal washing employing soap and weak alkalies and resist even solvents used in the washing process. This can be understood if it is taken into consideration that resinified linseed oil, pitch, cumarone resins, etc.- are very difiicultly soluble, or not at all, in the usually employed easily boiling organic solvents, whereas red lead, pigments and colored earths will not dissolve at all in such substances. In practical operation, it was therefore preferred hitherto to pick out by 35 hand all parts affected by pitch them whereby considerable losses of expensive materials are found even in finished goods, such as felts for pianos, which had to be carefully supervised till now to detect and remove the impure portions thereof.

The invention provides a which impuretextilematerials are'treated with high-boiling chemical compounds which saturate the impurities, soak and partially dissolve them.

process according to or suint and burn were brought about. 'Pitchy impurities Besides the water soluble organic, aliphatic, aro-- and their dichloroderivative, as well as the esters of these acids, esters, glycerin e. g.,.the aralkyl esters, glycol esters, -etc., all of which ,canbe used like the acid salts thereof and related salts. Likewise, the substituted or none-substituted aliphatic sulfo acids, sulfamic acids of sulfur ester acids, possibly in the form tassium salts, may be palmitic, elaidic. sulfo acids, the oleylaminoof theirsodium or poused, such as stearic,

ethane sulfo acid, the ricinoleic and diricinoleic sulfo acids as well as the stearyl alcohol sulfuric acid, the oleylalcohol sulfuric acidand their esters and salts; if the compounds mentioned are not oily, they are used in concentrated aqueous solution. To this class belong also the sulfonated fats and oils like Turkey red oil and sulionated tallow. The corresponding phosphoric acids or phosphoric acid esters may also be used, especially in the form of their acid salts or acid esters. The compounds as such or in the form of their concentrated aqueous solutions possess a high, penetrating capacity, so that they penetrate the impurities, soften them and dissolve them partly. After this soaking step, the high-boiling chemical compounds together with the impurities are removed from the fibers, preferably and as much as possible by mechanical means, e. .g.,

- squeezing or hydroextracting, the remainder being suspended in the impurity or the mostdiflicultly soluble parts thereof.

The substances concerned may themselves act as emulsifiers for aqueous suspensions like the sulfo acids, the sulfuric acid esters, the. phosphoric acids and esters,

and

the acid salts and carbonates. Preferably, alkaline washing'waters are used, which is absolutely necessary if free carboxylic acids have been employed,-as the latter, unlike their salts, the soaps, possess only slight emulsifying properties.

The impurities are thus removed from the textiles and .remain as suspension in water while the compounds used for To simplify the process the squeezed or hydro-extracted material may be placed di rectly in the usual washing liquors which are slightly alkaline and normal stuff. The substances used for soaking can be recovered-from the finish it together with the washing liquors either by salting out or adding mineral acids. The separated compound is purified in the usual way,

possibly. by filtration and then employed again for soaking impurities, of to the invention. Instead another lot according of homogeneous comapplied.

soaking serve then as The following examples serve to explain the invention without limiting it to the details stated therein.

Example 1 weight of commercial olein. After five to twenty hours, according to temperatur the impurities can be ground with the fingers. is then'removed by squeezing or hydro-extracting, and the wool placed in a weakly alkaline washing bath wherein the washing process is c. nple'ted in the usual manner at 50 C. By adding sulfuric acid to the washing water the olein can be recovered and used for the same process after having been purified by one of the customary methods, e. g. filtration.

Example 2 Example 3 Wool containing waxlike suint and picked out of normally washed'lots is saturated with Turkey red oil (50% quality), which requires about 2 or 3 The excess olein.

times the weight of the wool. The woolis allowed to stand at 20 C. until the impurities can be crushed between the fingers, which is usually the case after 6 to 8 hours. The material is then squeezed whereupon the excess Turkey red oil is removed by centrifuging and afterwards the wool added to the normal lots for taking part in the usual washing process. From the washing waters part of the oil can be recovered by the addition of common salt and used again for the same purpose.

Example 4 Raw cotton containing resinous or color impurities is saturated with twice the amount of ground nut oil acid. lifter the cotton has remained therein for 20 hours, it is squeezed and placed in a bath of 5% potash lye, whereupon it is hydro-extracted and Washed in an alkaline washing liquor until the washing process is completed.

I claim:-

The process of removing pitch from a textile material comprising steeping the material in a liquid higher fatty acid softener for pitch of a quantity exceeding the material in weightvuntil the pitch has become friable when the material is rubbed between fingers, removing so much of theaoid as can be mechanically removed, rendering the remaining acid water-soluble by introducing an aqueous alkaline solution to saponify the same, and then washing off the saponified acid together with the pitch emulsified therein.

EHRHART FRANZ. 

